Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes • Hacker News Board

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#71

Post by googlryas » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

toyg wrote: post #45

TylerE wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can assure that you don’t drive drunk. You can’t assure your bus driver didn’t pop a few pills before they came on shift.

You also can't be sure a random guy is not going to come from a side street on a red light at 90mph and T-bone you because he was answering a whatsapp and didn't notice the lights. I ride a motorbike. As part of training I was repeatedly told to wear protection not because of my riding skills, but because of everyone else's lack of skills.

You can't assure it, but again, you can control your own actions to help mitigate the danger of others being reckless. For example by driving defensively, scanning to the left and right when passing through an intersection, etc.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#72

Post by alice_zero » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

narush wrote: post #30

I _highly_ recommend consuming more of the content put out by Strong Towns [1]. If I were to summarize their message, it's that in the past 100 years, we've engaged in a large-scale experiment to design our places around cars. This is bad for safety, bad for the economy, and (most importantly!) bad for us people that live in these places! Content and education-wise, they are my favorite non-profit :) If you're lookin…

Seconding this, a large number of current social problems can be attributed to the way our cities is built. Homelessness (land use is inefficiently prioritizing single family homes and parking lots), public health (car dependency encourages minimal walking), and human connection (shared spaces become less appealing when they're not Of course there are going to be caveats and cars will always have a use. What matters is that people have a choice of convenient public transport rather than cars being the only option that's practical.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#73

Post by UncleMeat » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:52 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #9

woodruffw wrote: post #2

This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.

Or self-driving cars. Every incident is Big News, while ignoring the fact that 40,000 people die every year in traffic accidents (and 4.8 million injuries) -- in the US alone. People are of course famously bad at putting statistics into context.

I'll never forget driving across Georgia on Jan 1st a bunch of years ago. They've got signs up that say to drive safely and show how many traffic fatalities there have been in the state that year. On a random day it just looks like a number.

But driving on the highway and passing a sign that said how many people had died today doing precisely what I was doing at that moment was affecting.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#74

Post by 1123581321 » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

tristor wrote: post #57

The primary reason why I ignore car crashes is because I ensure that I do the following things, all of which greatly reduce my risk factor compared to the average: 1. I always drive attentively with both hands on the steering wheel. 2. I completed on-track driving instruction in a race car, multiple times, and also took training in evasive driving maneuvers. 3. I constantly maintain situational awareness of what's go…

All drivers avoid many close calls. That’s just inherent to being on the road.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#75

Post by googlryas » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

hgomersall wrote: post #47

TylerE wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can assure that you don’t drive drunk. You can’t assure your bus driver didn’t pop a few pills before they came on shift.

The point is, every driver you interact with might be drunk or distracted. In a collision with a drunk in a car, I'd rather be in a bus.

Sure, but you would probably rather be driving a car if your bus driver was suicidal that morning.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#76

Post by wahern » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:53 PM UTC

> No NTSB team is going to mobilize to investigate those tragedies. Nobody is going to seek the underlying causes or ponder the multiple contributing factors. In fact, if we ask safety officials, as a group they officially blame driver error and reckless driving for fatal car crashes. In other words, don’t look at them.

Perhaps a touch too hyperbolic? Here's what the NTSB has to say about the matter:

> The National Transportation Safety Board, an independent federal agency, has the authority to promote motor vehicle safety, determine the probable cause of motor vehicle-related crashes, and make safety recommendations aimed at preventing crashes. Over the years, NTSB has made recommendations to NHTSA.... Below is a list of open recommendations.

https://www.nhtsa.gov/ntsb-open-recommendations-nhtsa

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#77

Post by cscurmudgeon » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:54 PM UTC

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #63

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bad way to look at it. We should ask how many more people would die each day without cars. Somehow, this basic analysis is absent in all of the car-hate posts. Not considering pros and cons fairly is a not an honest approach. You can’t claim to be objective by just looking at negatives and proclaiming cars are bad overall. You need to sum up the negatives and positives (assuming an utilitarian view). Otherw…

Because that question is practically impossible to answer. You can't extrapolate current circumstances and draw a conclusion from there. The best you can do is compare with other countries, disregard any non-related-yet-ultimately-significant and draw a fairly weak conclusion from there. Most of those conclusions would not be in favor of cars, either. Especially not in light of environmental damage.

It is not impossible. Car haters like to think it is impossible.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#78

Post by otikik » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:54 PM UTC

TylerE wrote: post #15

woodruffw wrote: post #2

This is a really excellent read, and neatly summarizes a thought that flashes through the back of my mind whenever someone tells me that public transit is unsafe. If over 100 people died each day on public transit, we'd have banned it by now. But we accept it in our automotive culture, while simultaneously handwringing over every incident that happens on public transit.

The difference is control . While a careful, attentive driver in a well-maintained vehicle certainly isn’t immune, their risk is much lower than someone who drives tired, drunk, or high in a car with bald tires and bad brakes.

But the drunk driver can still invade your line on a split-second and frontal-crush you.

If you’re in a bus instead of a car, you will be much more protected against that kind of thing.

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#79

Post by narush » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

chroem- wrote: post #50

narush wrote: post #30

I _highly_ recommend consuming more of the content put out by Strong Towns [1]. If I were to summarize their message, it's that in the past 100 years, we've engaged in a large-scale experiment to design our places around cars. This is bad for safety, bad for the economy, and (most importantly!) bad for us people that live in these places! Content and education-wise, they are my favorite non-profit :) If you're lookin…

You can't conduct commerce on a bike. Anti-car policies are also closely coupled with inflated housing prices, since they effectively reduce the available housing supply by requiring employees to commute from within public transit distance of their job.

I'd highly recommend reading Confessions of a Recovering Engineer before debating my communication of it. There's a lot more depth to the arguments than the one-sentence summary a novice (me) can give :)

Namely, Strong Towns isn't anti-car! In fact, they explicitly arguing _against_ removing cars from city centers in most cases, for reasons related to those that you mention. If I remember correctly, many towns tried to do this in the 70's or something, and most of them failed; cars are still required in most cases.

That being said, _requiring_ cars and _allowing_ them are very different things. Being anti-bulldozing city blocks to put in 6-lane highways isn't anti-car, it's pro people!

Again, highly recommend engaging with the source material rather than taking my word for it. I've been consuming and parroting (sometimes badly) their content for months - they have been thinking about these questions for literally decades!

Re: Why we ignore thousands of daily car crashes

#80

Post by AtlasBarfed » Thu, Jul 21, 2022, 7:55 PM UTC

Roadside bombs were Iran-sourced, and played into political actors desires to 1) stay in Iraq 2) invade Iran. Well and 3) actors who want us out of Iraq.

Suicides of soldiers work as a deterrent to military action. No political actor wants that tool to be removed from their toolbelt. They want their "Defense Department" to be deployable at will with no hesitation from the American Public.

Traffic deaths are a necessary evil of transportation, economic activity, and the profits of the oil industry.